


Bitter Truths (A Bitter Tears, Bitter Laughter Remix)

by scarlettgirl



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, F/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-28
Updated: 2011-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarlettgirl/pseuds/scarlettgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At three in the morning, words like "lost" and "abandoned" aren't all that different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Truths (A Bitter Tears, Bitter Laughter Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bitter Laughter, Bitter Tears](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109) by [amaresu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaresu/pseuds/amaresu). 



Adam had noticed her immediately. Sitting at the end of the bar clutching a squat glass of amber liquid, she took only the occasional tentative sip and glanced at the door every time it opened, spilling glaring wedges of sunshine into the murky space.

She was…interesting. Out of place in a way that wasn’t easy to define, so he sat and watched. She smiled at the men who approached her but ended every conversation with a shake of her head. Waiting, he decided. She had the look of someone waiting.

Adam felt an unexpected pang of kinship. He knew what that was like. Ever since he’d been dumped in his flat like yesterday’s leavings he’d been waiting. Waiting for them to come back, waiting to wake up, waiting for someone to….

“And then I told him,” he heard a slurring voice boom. “Give me fifteen minutes and I’d have the bitch on her knees like _that_.”

Adam ducked his head as fat fingers snapped. The sound of his own fingers snapping, closing the steel trap in his skull, were lost in the shouts of drunken laughter. Not fast enough, he thought. _Not fast enough_. She’d been looking right at him and he’d seen eyes widen as she’d caught the brief gleam of unfolding metal.

Adam raised his head and saw his mystery woman appraising him. Her steady brown eyes searched his face for something he couldn’t quite place.

Well. This was new.

Grabbing his drink he crossed the room. She watched his progress with a deceptively casual awareness. Adam had noted the sudden tenseness in her shoulders as he approached but she hadn’t screamed or clutched at the bartender.

Sliding into the empty stool next to her, he opened with standard pub fare. “Waiting for someone?”

Glancing nervously over his shoulder toward the door, she laughed. “Seems like I’m always waiting for someone. I’m just not sure what face will walk in the door.”

He tipped his drink in her direction. “Faces can be deceiving. It’s what’s inside that really counts, yeah?”

“I guess you’d know,” she said, taking another tentative sip and looking at his smooth forehead. “Are you human?”

Adam thought for a moment. “What a strange question. Not too long ago I’d have said yes but now, I really don’t know. You?”

The question seemed to amuse her. This girl with broad, flat vowels and a sense of waiting.

Peri.

Peri who had been left behind.

They moved to a booth and traded stories involving police boxes and arrogance. Adam thought he’d be surprised to meet someone who could finally confirm that his nightmare reality wasn’t actually a fever dream or some long hallucination brought on by mental breakdown. He’d always half expected to wake up in the mental ward, surrounded by whispering white, soft voices conferring “That Adam, always worked too hard for his own good.” Instead his confirmation was tipping amber liquid down her throat and looking at him with knowing eyes.

“He wasn’t always like this, you know,” she states, again and again. Adam just shrugs and swallows another drink. His Doctor had always been like this and Peri’s whispered mantras weren’t going to change that. Faces may change but Adam had learned long before the bunker or Satellite Five that externals are only shells over a rotten core. His whole life had been about presenting the right face, making the right friends, getting the right job. He was just drunk enough to appreciate the irony of his current situation.

“It really was a mistake,” he smiled, pouring more liquid into her glass. “I want you to know that. It was all so confusing and bright and it seemed like such an amazing thing. I didn’t know…”

He stopped. Because he did know and he was just drunk enough to not be able to pretend that he didn’t. It was easier to loathe the smiling faces that had dropped him into this half-life than to examine the naked ambition that had drawn him to that shiny, sterile clinic.

“What will you do then?” he asked, finally. “Will he come back to get you?”

Peri shrugged. An act that nearly sent her tumbling to the floor.

“He loses things,” she said, smiling tipsily in his direction. “It’s not the first time.”

“Keys you lose. People? I dunno. Seems a bit careless.”

She seemed to find this comment amusing and he soon found himself laughing along, wiping away tears with the back of his hand.

“I think we’re getting the eye,” he said finally, catching his breath. “All the other patrons of this fine establishment appear to have crawled back into their comfortable holes. Come on.”

Peri took Adam’s hand and rose unsteadily to her feet. The bartender, wiping the counter with a filthy rag, nodded as they passed. Adam tipped his finger to his forehead in a mock salute that sent Peri into a fit of giggles.

“Does he know?” she asked. “About the the..” She waved in the general direction of his forehead.

“Maybe. Doesn’t come up in general conversation,” he said with the level of mock seriousness one only achieves after a night of drinking that will surely make you regret the morning.

Laughing, holding on to each other desperately, they made their way to the street. It was there that he discovered that on a corner at 3 a.m. words like “lost” and “abandoned” aren’t so different.

Adam ushered her into his flat and fixed her a cup of tea. He held her as she cried and told himself that he was being kind. He and Peri, they both knew what it was like to be lost. They were kindred spirits, right? He would be her shelter in the storm. And if Peri’s Doctor showed up to find his lost girl, it wouldn’t be out of the realm that he, the man Peri claimed had once been so kind, might take pity on Adam. Granting him a boon for his generosity.

He stroked Peri’s hair and rocked her gently. Adam’s face may have changed, but he hadn’t forgotten how to play the angles. Even when the angle was currently wrapped in soft curves and weeping gently into his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published 8/14/09 for the Who Remix challenge


End file.
